


Vacation

by quigonejinn



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-07
Updated: 2013-08-07
Packaged: 2017-12-22 17:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/916027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quigonejinn/pseuds/quigonejinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When you are fifteen, your father takes you on vacation to an island with white beaches and palm trees. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vacation

When you are twelve, your mother dies. When you are fifteen, your father takes you on vacation to an island with white beaches and palm trees. There are no population centers; there isn’t a year-round population of more than ten thousand, so there is nothing for you to do; not that you could have done it the first two days. You spend that time exhausted, doing not a lot more than sleeping and getting up for a glass of water or a bathroom run, but on the third day, you wake before dawn, go out into the living room where your father is watching the news, and ask whether people go into the ocean here.

"Sure," your father says, turning around to look at you over the back of his chair. The guy at the front desk has offered it a couple times already. Easy enough to take him up on it: it turns out to be front-desk-guy's cousin, and he and your father talk the whole way out to the snorkeling site. You’re in the water at eleven o’ clock or so, local time, and you swim around a little with goggles and the breathing tube and flippers; the water is warm as a bath, and then you come back to the boat and consider, for a moment, what you want to say. 

"Saw a shark," you say and glance over at the guy fishing off the back of the boat. "One of them blacktip ones, yeah?"

You turn to your father. You say, very specifically, “Reminded me of Stonebelt. You know, Manila-14 from last year?”

He pauses for a long time, and then he says, “Chuck, we’re on vacation.”

"So?" 

"Vengeance is an open wound," he says, and you can tell he’s practiced the line, but not for this environment. You can tell that he doesn’t want to have this conversation here. He’d looked relaxed before you brought it up — palm hat, sunglasses, beer in his hand. The boat guy had been doing a little fishing, and lunch was going to be whatever he caught, grilled back on the beach. You look back and see that the guy is trying to listen without looking like he is. Does he recognize either of you? 

Your father starts again. ”You can’t —” 

“ _Vengeance is an open wound,_ ” you say. ”That one of Stacker’s lines? Works better on Mako, I guess.” 

Your father’s face goes flat. Grinning, you flop backwards into the water. 

…

When you are twelve, your mother dies. When you are fifteen, your father takes you on vacation to an island with white beaches and palm trees and warm water. You’ve finished at the Academy, graduated near the top of your class, behind only a pair of Indian fighter pilots who are a full decade older — and well, Mako, too, but she’ll never get into a Jaeger if her father has anything to do with it. 

This vacation is your father’s attempt to have _something to do with it_. When your first two would-be co-pilots don't work out, he volunteers for Eureka Striker: you see that as what it is, an attempt to control, to mitigate. 

How successful is he, Chuck Hansen? You kill your first kaiju two days after your sixteenth birthday.


End file.
